From Hellgatewiki.com

An archived Hellgate: London feature. See the Hellgate Archives for more.

Feature: German PC Powerplay Magazine Feature
Date: May 2006
Source: Translated from scans of the magazine. Scans: Page one,

PC Powerplay Article Translation

Translation compiled from multiple online sources/forum posts.

General News:

• Hellgate is still pre-alpha (sry guys)
• Level Cap assumed to be 99
• The Devs are not sure how many classes there will be in the final version of the game
• Hellgate London plays in London only
• As the world is a bit colorless the effects seem to be too colorful, but they are working on it.
• Instanced world: the alignment of zones is predefined while the zone itself is generated new every time you enter it again.
• Beeing to key areas (ie.: Leicester Square Station) for the first time unlocks a telporter to that area.
• Bill Roper: "Hellgate for us is first and foremost a MMOG"
• The campaign can be beaten cooperative
• 40+ players raids in addition to the campaign (Roper: "up to 50 players")
• Bossfight will be a special challenge as you will need special tactics.
• Quests: ranging from "get me X of item Y" to npc escorts; There will also be "miniquests" that need you to kill a predefined amount of a specific monster type in a certain time or a predefined amount of monsters with specific weapon dmg.
• Hardcore players share the same "hubs" with softcore players, but they will be easily distinguishable.
• Faction/reputation system similar to WoW:

Cabalist does Templar Missions -->reputation increases --> cabalist is granted access to basic templar skills (ie. wield light swords)

• Content patches planned to constantly increase the online content of Hellgate:London
• Pay to play online: still not decided, but Pc Powerplay assumes that there will either be pay to play or - like guildwars - addons that one must buy in stores to get new content.

Class news:

• Focus Items are needed to get access to more powerful cabalist spells.
• Reliquaries add holy damage to templar skills/attacks
• Each Class has 30 Skills/Abilities, no skills have other skills as prerequisites; that means character build madness - weeeee!
• NO pet commands for cabalist pets; Pets react more or less agressive depending on the enemies you're facing.
• Shapeshifting for the cabalist is not yet implemented; It has been stated though, that the cabalist will be able to not only improve his/her attack power/defense with shapeshifting, but also change visually (ie. grow claws instead of hands, grow wings, stuff like that).

Unveiled Templar Skills:

• Finshing Blow: leap attack in D2.
• Flurry Boost: increases attackspeed.
• Challenge: AoE taunt
• Sacred Winds: holy defense against projectiles.
• Fiery Aura: this dude is on fire!!
• Whirlwind Blast: see Whirlwind in D2

Unveiled Cabalist pets:

• Carnagor: tanking Pet, burrows and approaches enemies underground (Starcraft anyone?)
• Shrieker: terrifies enemies with it's roars and disappears after 6 attacks (similar to the raven skill of the druid in D2)

UI News:

• There will be three slots for both weapons and specialattacks so that the players are able to easily change their weapon/skill setup in-fight.
• Stats and Bonuses on newly acquired items are instantly compared to your current equipment. (see WoW)

Ladder News:

• There will be different ladders:
  • 1. highest Level
  • 2. most killed monsters
  • 3. money

and many other variants.

The top ranked players will be easily distinguishable from other players since they will get special badges and/or armor graphics.

Weapon Mod News

• Batteries add damagetypes (poison, fire, etc.) to a weapon
• Fuelcells add special effects to weapons (AoE, ...)
• Ammo clips give +Weapondamage or +Hitchance

_______________________

Auctionhouses and PVP-Arenas will be the same on all servers (so you sell/fight on server A and players from server C have access). This way the servers arn't isolated as in WoW.

There will be ladders for different things:
1. highest Level
2. number of killed monsters
3. money
4. and much more
The winners will get special looking equipment.

Players of hardcore are easily identifiable (looks like they use the same Subwaystations as the softcore-player).

The mag wrote that the limit now is at Lvl. 99, but this will be set higher at a later time (better said when we can buy it in the store).

As the world is a bit colorless the effects seem to be too colorful, but they are working on it (Bill Roper)

Bossfight will be a special challenge as you need special tactics to defeat them.

Batteries add damagetypes (poison, fire, etc.) to a weapon

Fuelcells give a weapon special effects (Lifeleech, ...)

Weaponclips add to the damage or add to the chance to hit an enemy

Reliquaries add holy damage (Templar only)

The enemies are often much much taller as the PC

There will be three variants for weapons and specialattacks, these can be switched (via keyboard) in the middle of a fight.